Kuromon Ichiba Market in Osaka is overrated 🥴

Unfortunately I think the Kuromon Ichiba market is Osaka is quite overrated.

I think the prices here are quite inflated and whilst I was willing to spend because I’m on a holiday in Japan, I am of course still mindful on what I spend on and if it’s worth the $.

Here’s what we had:

🍠We arrived at 9:08AM on a weekday and the market was bustling but not crowded. So I thought okay it’s not too bad, my eyes immediately directed to this sign selling hot sweet potatoes and I just had to get it!! The store owner was still cooking them and but he gave me the most ready one for 200yen which is pretty cheap! (i realized he sold the cheapest after walking around later).

After sweet potatoes, I saw another store selling sweet potato chips but resisted. We then went looking for the typical market bites - seafood: unagi, crab meat, sashimi etc.

🦀We were walking around and was kinda shocked that they were kinda expensive?!! 1000 yen for unagi and egg and 1500 yen for a stick of unagi 🥲 - granted they are huge pieces but like 1500yen could get u a set meal else where though yknow?

So we walked further and found this old lady at the corner selling reasonably priced food and thought to go for it. We paid for a crab leg and unagi. When she took out the crabstick we were like 🙄cos it wasn’t real crabstick as advertised !!! It was the fake one lol.. then she started to prepare the unagi by taking out of a box and then going back to her “kitchen” and thats when we felt SO SCAMMED…. She heated the crabstick and unagi in the microwave….. then place it on the hot grill and used a blowtorch to give it that char…

Ngl we were kinda taken aback, my bf and I just stared at each other and was like tf did we really just spent $20 on these???

🐡 We passed a Fugu sashimi place earlier and thought like ok yolo lets try cos its a delicacy. It was alright.. the meat was tough and chewy and also kinda fishy. Thankfully we did not get pressured into buying a bigger plate as we had to soak it with the soy sauce and wasabi to finish it.

🍈 Got some honeydew juice to wash everything down after and this was so sweet and good!! I think it was worth the $ even though it was a tiny cup. But my bf felt they definitely blended with sugar😂

🍚My bf got hungry so we went looking for something more substantial - decided to go for a rice bowl with uni, otoro and ikura. Honestly we should have looked at the menu before rushing in to the restaurant to avoid the crowds. The price we saw outside the shop was probs like 2500-3500 yen so was expecting a huge bowl. But when we ordered the person was like asking if we were sure because it’s not enough… we decided against a bigger bowl cos we wanted to see how its like first. But when it came, its was seriously tiny😂 80% of it was rice tbh which made us 🙄😑 felt kinda scammed here too.

🍠 We felt super underwhelmed after that and also the market started getting real packed (like u cant even walk properly), so we decided it was time to leave get out. And I had to buy my sweet potato chips before leaving!!

Honestly the best part of this place was seriously just the sweet potatoes😂 the rest of the seafood was kinda spenny and yes I get its ✨Japan✨ but….I could get cheaper and as good quality seafood here in Melbourne at the south melbourne markets so…🤷🏻‍♀️

There is definitely more to this market than what I’ve mentioned but they weren’t anything wow or new to us after traveling Tokyo. I’d say it’s still a place to visit if it’s in your Osaka bucketlist / for the first time but otherwise I feel you can skip this! I don’t think I’ll revisit again.

#mindfulspending #kuromonichiba #osakafood #japan #lemon8travel